8. Forfeits
Forfeits
Things didn’t exactly go back to normal once I’d cornered Alluin.
For one, as a captain, I spent more time in forts and outposts than in the field, which made it a lot easier for Alluin and I to meet up.
For another, before the month was out, Alluin purchased and presented me with a world-class flicker-bird as a ‘belated celebration’ of my promotion, so he no longer had any excuse for not receiving my letters.
The joke was on him. With my own personal flicker-bird that I could send directly to him, regardless of locale, Alluin became the recipient of what was essentially my diary.
I reassured him that he didn’t need to respond in kind—and he didn’t, continuing to send the same formal letters he always had—but having Alluin missing from my life had cracked open some sort of vault inside of me.
I wanted him to know everything about me.
I wanted him to want to know everything about me.
I knew he read them, because he’d comment on my life like he’d been by my side, and I knew he liked them, because the one time I got too self-conscious to send him my stream-of-consciousness drivel, he showed up in person to make sure I was alright.
So, I kept sending them, everything from my various escapades to the difficulties of command.
When I met someone who could even begin to temporarily fill the hole his absence left in my life, I told him.
When I went home for the Feast of Doves to be fawned over by my parents and snubbed by my sister, I told him.
I poured out all my hurt and longings and the years of not understanding how to be more than a butterfly flitting across the surface of the world, and Alluin wrote back with pieces of his own life, all in formal prose but so obviously difficult for him to share that I cherished every glimpse through the cracks.
“It has now been seventeen years since I returned. I have oft wished to know if the fields yet grow white with meadowfoam and if the bees still make their home in the beech-tree which holds steadfast above the yawning mouth of the earth, but his shadow is upon everything in my mind, and I cannot bear to see it.”
“In the darkest of days, I once spent hour upon hour searching my skin for the marriage-marks I knew I could not find. I think now when those days come of the pale marks left on your starclad form by another ravenous beast wearing love like a cloak, and am glad that both have faded beyond recovery.”
“One day, I should like to be free of the earth that anchors me. I pace like a dog on a chain, circling and circling, choked by my own actions, and yet cannot bite through the yoke of duty.”
I waited decades to ask Alluin about his home—about the manor he’d inherited, the familial estate of the Xilsatras, now squatted in by one Nylandis Kaeyha, Alluin’s erstwhile paramour and my mortal enemy.
I was nice about it. I didn’t get him drunk. I even gambled for it, to be somewhat fair. Despite his ability to count cards, I knew Alluin so well that I could outplay him in betting games any day of the week.
Alluin frowned at me from across the card table. “You want to know about Droesh?” he asked, like he couldn’t imagine why that could be.
“That’s right.” I gave him a catlike smile.
“You talk about that place like it’s your ancestral curse.
Which I know can’t be true, by the way, because you were born before we started building in stone, and I’ve read all the architectural descriptions of your manor.
It’s all of, what? Three thousand years old, maybe? And that’s only the really old parts.”
He raised a brow. “Are you stalking me?”
“Getting information out of you is like wooing a clam, Lu,” I said, turning on the boyish charm and beaming at him like this was a delight.
“I feel that I have been extremely patient, and I have shored up that patience by reading every document tangentially related to you that I could get my stalkerish hands on. Now, pay up. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Would you want to go back if a certain someone wasn’t squatting in it like a vulture on a carcass? ”
“Zhi…” Alluin said, giving me a pained look.
I flopped back against the chair and hooked my arms over the back.
“Seriously,” I said, dropping the act and letting him see my concern.
“I haven’t been pushy about wanting to know because I know it’s not an easy topic for you, but I’m worried about you.
It’s like you’re trying to go through life with an iron knife in your back, poisoning your blood and cutting you with every step.
” I blew out a breath. “Why don’t you just sell him the damn place and be done with it? ”
His ears pinned back. “It’s not that simple.”
“Well, yes, presumably. That’s why I’m asking.” My mouth slanted up into a wry smile. “It’s alright if it’s a long story. I have all night.”
“You have less than an hour,” Alluin said, giving me a look. “You’re supposed to be tupping that handsome weaver once he’s closed his master’s shop.”
“Getting my cock sucked by him, actually, but forget that,” I said brightly. “I wasn’t sure if I’d manage to win a large enough forfeit for secrets, so I made alternate plans, but I’d much rather get an answer out of you. Consider the cock-sucking canceled.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up into an expression of bewildered pleasure. “You’d rather hear about my family trauma than get your cock sucked by an eager-to-please mortal? He practically whimpered when you whispered that request into his ear.”
“Aw, don’t be jealous. I can whisper filthy things into your ear, too, if you like,” I said, to see the way he always perked his ears when I treated him with the same casual flirtation I did everyone else.
People didn’t often gather the courage to flirt with the General of the First Army.
Too remote, too beautiful, and far too self-composed to get propositioned—and far too heartbroken to be doing any propositioning.
Alluin nipped his lower lip, a movement that had my hawklike attention on it in an instant. “Would you, now?” he asked, his voice deeper than it had been a moment earlier. “Why don’t you come here and prove it?”
We were in an inn, sitting at a corner table, in our own little bubble but hardly alone.
Even in fae society, there were certain drawbacks to committing private acts in public.
No one would trouble us about it, of course, but even if they weren’t actively watching or listening, it wasn’t as if everybody would be unaware of Captain Ulahana whispering filthy things with his lips on General Xilsatra’s ear.
And if, against all odds, Alluin did something as rash and foolish as paying me back for it…
Well, suffice it to say that I only had so much willpower. If Alluin put his mouth on my ear and crooned something sultry about sucking my cock, there would be no mistaking the sounds or the face I would make, let alone hiding the wet spot on my pants.
I liked that he was willing to flirt back, though. That seemed like an improvement over his general state of melancholy.
I leaned closer, using the movement to disguise the way I had to tuck my stiffening cock up under my belt. “What’ll you give me for it?” I purred back.
His eyes flashed. A hungry smile I barely recognized on his face heated his expression. “I’ll let you sleep with me tonight. A consolation prize for that cock-sucking you’re giving up for my companionship.”
The blood rushed to my groin so fast I felt dizzy, my vision brightening and breathing going shallow.
Holy black night. Alluin was playing with me like a cat toying with a mouse.
He had to know how attractive and unattainable he was, and I was a notorious rake.
Even if he hadn’t been my closest friend—even if I hadn’t been secretly besotted for the better part of a century—he had to know exactly the sort of challenge he presented for someone like me.
If I refused now, he’d know exactly what he was doing to me, and there was no way that wouldn’t change his comfort around me. I couldn’t bear sacrificing our friendship on the altar of my over-eager sex drive. My gems could go ahead and suffer.
I tilted my head to the side like I didn’t care, letting my silver-white waves tumble down over my shoulder. “That sounds like another prize for you, Lu,” I said in a croon. His expression wavered, a tiny moment of uncertainty, so I flashed him a smile and added, “but I accept.”
Before Alluin could do more than exhale sharply, I pushed myself up and sank down on one knee next to his chair, leaning forward so that I had one hand on his thigh taking some of my weight and my mouth and nose up against the sharp lines of his ear.
My blood roared in my ears and all my skin went hypersensitive.
I wanted to run my tongue along the long line of his ear, to slide my hand up his inner thigh to find him hard for me, to finally give into every guilty fantasy I’d had about him.
Those were lines I couldn’t cross. What I thought about when I had my cock fisted in my hand or buried inside some willing partner was my own business, but I could never let those fantasies see the light of day.
I could never face the heartbreak in his eyes when I inevitably fucked it up.
Alluin tilted his head back, a tiny movement, his brow creasing and eyes closing. “Well?” he asked, sounding so much more put-together than me.